


pas de une

by plnkblue



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Abstract, Character Study, Other, Post-Canon, Zine: The Shadow You Cast: A Vanitas Appreciation Zine (Kingdom Hearts)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-18
Updated: 2020-11-18
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:21:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27612701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plnkblue/pseuds/plnkblue
Summary: an abstract conceptualization of vanitas after the battle in kh3— inspired by the "night on bald mountain" and "ave maria" segments of fantasia (1940)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 6
Collections: Queer Certified Good Fic





	pas de une

**Author's Note:**

> this is the original prose version of the poem i wrote last year for the vanitas zine!! this concept has been very close to my heart since writing it and i'm very happy to be able to share the original concept now. please check out all the other wonderful writers and artists who worked on this zine!! @[vanitaszine](https://twitter.com/VanitasZine)

The desert breathes.

Its chest swells with the pride of sunlight, ribcage afloat on the morning air. The wind howls with the resonance of a choir, afternoon dust in its throat. Night is ushered in with a slow exhale, and in the absence of oxygen, dead things come out to dance.

Vanitas is one of them.

Fingertips of clouds scrape the surface of the earth. Born again, under the cover of ash and starlight, he lets himself rise up. Cracked lips twist in a grimace of a grin, and his eyes spill liquid legion. Cartilage like tar seeps from between his cracks and muddies the ground beneath him. Bleeding. The feelings take their form, red eyes and twitching palms like a baby’s pleading grasp. Sickly, burrowing; these are morbid infants. He has no love for this kin.

These creatures follow him through the hours, like they always have and always will. The silence of the sand is the only symphony he needs to conduct them by. His hands bend, and the insects break.

A thin one rises from the depths of him. Its shivering claws dance across cold skin before collapsing beneath its own weight, a tiny, trembling thing. It knows itself too weak to dance, yet it preys on pirouettes all the same. This child is bug-like. Vanitas squashes it like so, and two more take its place.

Another mercy killing.

Pity is a foreign thing to him. These blood bodies must dance where he can not, on soil of sun and blister. They must carry his remnant beyond the dark side of the moon.

Iron sharpens iron. There is no room for anything in this world that cannot cut into him.

When the lungs begin their steady inhale, Vanitas feels the ache like clockwork. His shadow grows long behind him in the creeping light; a safe place to hide. A grave molded to fit his fragile bones.

The creatures at his feet hiss as sunlight scalds their skin— again, again; they are sewn from what he has spilled. They are not meant to dance in this dark pseudonym, but each twilight is a recital all the same. He will twist this ballet backwards before it makes him bleed from anything other than his own volition.

Under the sea of his shadow, he hears the waves of the world. He’s so close to the sternum; he could snap it if he tried. With the heart of his home gone, maybe the cycle could finally cease.

A heartbeat translates breath in ways that the lungs can only dream of. Slow, rhythmic; the song of a dawn that is hardly half as broken as he. The sunlight hums its lullaby, harmonizing voices of the angels that beckon their fallen one home. He cannot rise yet. His weight, this river; he is meant to drown down here.

A body. A boy. A sinking thing.

But the angels are a patient kind. They trust in a faith long forgotten by the boy, a warmth he has long since substituted for the venom he spits into the dirt.

They will wait.

In time, Vanitas will choose to burn instead of bleed.

**Author's Note:**

> kh twit: @[finalworlds](https://twitter.com/finalworlds)


End file.
